Dina was married to Ramon’s uncle, his stepmom’s brother, so she had no blood relation to him, but they had been a tight-knit little family until Dina’s husband decided to move back to the Miami area where they were originally from with most of their money, and…with his young girlfriend that Dina didn’t know about until he was gone. She was devastated. Who took in her and her two kids? Ramon’s stepmom, who was furious with her brother for being such a dickhead. It was tight in her house for a couple of years until Dina’s oldest, went off to college at the University of Georgia, but they survived and are now doing okay.
Dina also waitressed some in the evenings and on weekends to help pay the bills. She was a feisty lady, and great with Eva and Noah, who loved her dearly.
Dina and Ramon’s family were all 1st or 2nd generation Americans from Puerto Rico, and usually spoke Spanish in their own households. Scott enjoyed teasing Dina by saying, “one day I’m going to come home, and my kids are only going to speak Spanish.”
She gave it right back to him by saying, “you should remember that the next time I need a raise.”
Truthfully, they loved their kids picking up Spanish, and she would read to them in Spanish, while Scott and Janie would read to them in English. They viewed bilingualism as a bonus, but he still liked to tease the spicy Dina.
Ramon told Scott she had just turned forty, which had surprised him. He would have guessed mid-thirties, at most, if only by looking at her pretty, sultry face, which reminded him of Rosario Dawson. Her figure was much curvier, though. She had wide hips, and a bodacious butt, which looked amazing when she wore jeans. She was not thin in her mid-section, though, but still had a ‘cello’ figure, definitely not an hourglass. Thigh gap? Forget about it.
She caused quite the stir at the end-of-summer block party, last year when she showed up with Noah, who had just woken up from his nap. Janie was already in the pool with Eva. Dina shucked off her coverup, and every male near the pool stopped to watch her. It was a relatively conservative one-piece, but it was covering, or trying to cover, a lot of flesh.
Scott was talking to his neighbor manning the grill when he heard a whispered, “Holy Mary, mother of God.” If a C-cup is a grapefruit and a D-cup is a cantaloupe, then her honeydews had to be much more than a DD, easy.
One of the women, near them, saw the commotion and said, “Poor thing. I’ll be they give her all sorts of problems.”
Someone said, “Like drawing the attention of every male within a one-mile radius.”
Dina was used to the attention, wanted or not, and simply enjoyed her time with the kids in the pool. She loved those kids.
She looked after the kids during the day, and on some evenings, she would make dinner for them to have when Janie and Scott arrived home from work. Scott and Janie were very grateful for Dina in their lives and often discussed if they could do more for her. Mostly, that meant giving her little bonuses of cash or gift cards from time to time.
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Janie made the normally four-hour drive to Nashville in just a bit over three. The investigator, formerly a Nashville detective, met her at a McDonald’s near some middling to lower-end apartments on the southeast side of town between the zoo and the airport. He had informed her that they should plan to remove Kathleen from her current situation and take her to a nearby hospital. Janie could only wonder what had befallen her sister.
The PI told her that he saw Kathleen enter the apartment in the wee hours of the morning with a man and another woman. Unless she had left while they briefly met at McDonald’s, she was still there. Janie approached the door with the PI but stayed out of view of anyone that might be in the second-floor apartment.
He banged on the door until someone finally answered. It was a huge redneck-looking dude with a scruffy beard and long hair, and given that he was only wearing a pair of boxers, his copious tattoos could be easily seen. He was big enough to be an NFL lineman. The PI flashed a badge and pulled his pistol telling the redneck to get down on the ground. The guy offered no resistance and looked like he had been woken from sleep, even though it was almost noon.
Once the PI had assessed the situation, he called Janie to come in. She nearly gagged at the overwhelming stench of marijuana. While the PI kept his pistol aimed at the big guy, Janie found Kathleen in a bed with another girl. It looked like the redneck had been in the bed with them. The women were both asleep.
Janie tried but struggled to get Kathleen awake. The other girl complained and moaned about the light and the noise. Once the sheet was pulled back, Janie gasped. Her poor beautiful sister. There were hickeys, bruises, and bites all over her body. Her nipples were pierced, and she could see a couple of needle marks on her left arm.
Finally, she had awoken Kathleen enough that she focused on Janie. When she saw Janie, Kathleen’s face showed shock, then shame. Her bottom lip began to quiver, and tears began to flow.
She covered her face and sobbed, “No. Don’t look at me. Go away.”
Janie wasn’t about to do that. She snatched the sheet off the bed, wrapped it around her sister, and pulled her up and towards the door. She was afraid that Kathleen wouldn’t be able to navigate the steps and told the PI she needed help.